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We sat there and stared at each other. It was like a staring contest with a really hot statue.
Finally, she said, “The tribunal has voted against a trial.”
I sat up, feeling something like hope rising. “Really? That’s good news.”
“They voted against it because Missy has challenged you to trial by battle, which is her right as Dick’s consort.”
“You guys are just making this up as you go along! ” I cried. “Dick and Missy weren’t even in a real relationship. Hell, if everyone he slept with could challenge me to a duel, I’d be fighting half the county. You could challenge—”
She crossed her arms and glared at me. Probably not good to give her ideas.
“Never mind,” I said. “Is it going to be pistols at dawn? Swords at sundown? How does this trial-by-battle thing work?”
“The last battle was fought with sharpened snow shovels,” she told me.
“Now I know you’re screwing with me.” I snorted. Her expression didn’t change. “Oh, come on!”
“Missy will choose the weapon,” Ophelia informed me.
“She’s going to accessorize me to death?”
“Or she can choose hand-to-hand combat.” Ophelia nodded.
“I stand by my statement,” I deadpanned.
My arms finally healed up about an hour after Ophelia left me. She said she would come back an hour be fore my appointment with Missy the grieving ex to let me feed and update me on the duel arrangements. She even promised to serve as my second. How did I get to a point in my life where I needed a second?
Semierotic fisticuffs with Gabriel aside, I didn’t have any faith in my fighting skills. Walter had nearly splintered my skull with his bare hands, and from what I heard, he’d spent most of his time watching Battlestar Galactica in his mother’s basement.
After pacing, humming, yoga, and playing Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon with the entire cast of Good Times, exhaustion finally got to me, and I managed to fall asleep. I dreamed that I was walking along that long, dark country road and felt the pain of Bud McElray’s bullet all over again. Only instead of finding me and turning me, Gabriel drove by in a big black Cadillac. He laughed and pelted me with cigars and drove away. Anyone care to interpret that?
I jolted awake, yelling, “Freud!” Dick was sitting in the corner of my cell, smirking at me. “I can’t leave you alone for two seconds, can I?”
“Dick?” I said, wiping an alarming amount of sleep drool from my cheek. “Wait, are you a ghost?”
He sat on the cot and grasped my knee, so I could feel he was substantial. “Nope, still as undead as ever.”
I removed his hand and put it back on his own knee. He gave me a blithe grin, which, Lord help me, made me hug him. He was clearly caught off guard by this and, after hesitating, gave me a completely innocent squeeze.
“Hey, you’re not trailer dust!” I exclaimed. “And your hand is on my knee again.”
“Sorry,” he said, not looking the least bit so. “And no, I’m not dust. I had a fireproof sleeping compartment built under the trailer a few years ago. I smelled the gas and jumped into it just in time.”
“Your sleeping compartment is fireproof?”
“I have my reasons,” he said, feigning indignation. “I just figured my place got torched by one of my less than civically minded associates. I laid low for a while. I didn’t know you’d been blamed for the whole thing until this evening when I heard about the duel. I couldn’t leave you locked up. With the public showers and the shackles—”
“Shh,” I said, holding a finger to his lips. “I’m glad you’re OK. Let’s not ruin that.”
He kissed the fingertip, which I then used to tweak his nose. He caught my hand and smelled my skin. He cocked an eyebrow and smirked, then rolled his eyes. If he could smell Gabriel on my hair before we had sex…
“If you say what is in your head right now, I will rescind my previous statement and kill you. For real this time,” I told him.
“Speaking of that, how about I give you a ride home?” he said. “There’s some stuff we need to talk about in private.”
“The stuff you cryptically referred to during your call? How did you get my cell-phone number, anyway?”
“We’ll talk about it later,” he said, dragging me to the door.
